HEIDEGGER, MARTIN

HEIDEGGER, MARTIN (1889–1976), was a German philosopher. Young Heidegger's concern with the meaning of holy scripture was matched by his interest in the question of the meaning of being. Raised as a strict Roman Catholic, he studied for the priesthood for two years before deciding to pursue philosophy at the University of Freiburg. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1915, he stayed on at the university to work with Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology. During the years 1916 to 1919, Heidegger came to find Catholic dogma too rigid and moved toward liberal Protestantism. In the 1920s he appears to have abandoned his faith altogether, yet throughout his life he remained deeply involved with religious and spiritual issues. From 1923 to 1928, he taught at the University of Marburg, where he was a colleague of Rudolf Bultmann, Paul Tillich, and Rudolf Otto. Then he returned to Freiburg to replace the aging Husserl as professor of philosophy. In 1933–1934, while rector of the university, he openly supported National Socialism, but he soon changed his position and began challenging Nazi views in his classes. As a result, he was eventually declared expendable and was sent to work on the Rhine dikes. After World War II, he returned to Freiburg, where he spent the rest of his life teaching and writing as a professor of philosophy. Heidegger's thought can be divided into an early and a late phase. The late phase, the so-called turn, began in the late 1930s. This "turn" was not a radical shift in his thinking but rather the mature expression of insights he had voiced earlier.

Heidegger's Early Thought

In his major work, Being and Time (1927), Heidegger claims that human existence, or Dasein, constitutes the temporal-historical clearing in which beings can manifest themselves, or "be." For Heidegger, being does not mean the metaphysical ground of reality, a role traditionally assigned to God, but instead the finite presencing or manifesting of entities as entities, as things that are. One's ability to use the word is shows that one understands the difference between being (presencing) and entities (things that present or reveal themselves). Because one is constantly understanding and interpreting what it means for oneself and other beings "to be," Heidegger concludes that human existence is essentially hermeneutical. Although one often understand oneself as a thing, such as an egos or thinking subject, Heidegger argues that humans are not things at all. Instead, they are the finite openness in which things, such as subjects and objects, can first manifest themselves, or "be." Each person must decide how to be this openness, whether inauthentically or authentically. As inauthentic, human Dasein conceals the fact that it is mortal openness and interprets itself as an enduring thing, like an ego or a soul. Yet, the mood of anxiety can at any time reveal that Dasein is not a thinglike substance, but instead finite openness for the being of beings. This revelation invites Dasein to halt its flight into distractions and roles that conceal who Dasein really is. In the moment of authenticity, Dasein resolves to undergo a radical change in its temporal openness. As a result of this change, Dasein no longer understands itself as an ego bent on avoiding death, but instead as a finite individual called on to take responsibility for its own limited possibilities and to act in concert with others to promote the community's heritage. Authenticity, then, is not merely a personal matter, but an event that aligns one with the destiny of one's people. For Heidegger, authenticity is a prerequisite for genuine philosophical understanding of being. Influenced by Augustine, Pascal, Luther, Kierkegaard, Dostoevskii, and Nietzsche, he maintains that theoretical knowledge must be rooted in the personal experience of authentic human existence. Only such experience promotes the fulfillment of Western philosophy: to understand the being of beings.

Heidegger's Later Thinking and Its Impact on Theology

In Being and Time, Heidegger approaches being by analyzing the being (human Dasein ) who understands being; in his later works, however, he approached being in other ways. For example, he meditated on the role played by language in the self-revealing, or being, of beings. Moreover, he no longer spoke of authenticity in voluntaristic terms, such as "resoluteness," but instead described it as "releasement" (Gelassenheit ) from will, ego, and subjectivism. This turn in his thinking, which took on a mystical element influenced by Meister Eckhart, revealed new possibilities for a dialogue between philosophy and theology. The idea of releasement, for instance, has clear affinities with the Christian doctrine of grace. Heinrich Ott, a student of both Rudolf Bultmann and Karl Barth, was one of the first to point out the theological implications of Heidegger's later thought. Although the analysis in Being and Time of human Dasein had been inspired in part by Barth's work on the apostle Paul, Barth rejected Heidegger's philosophy because it overemphasized human understanding and did not properly address the being of God. Bultmann's theology supposedly suffered from a similar problem. But Ott argues that the later Heidegger corrected his early overemphasis on the human and spoke instead of humanity's need to be "appropriated" (ereignet) by and for the "event" (Ereignis ) that "gives" being to us. Preparing for such appropriation requires a thinking that is more fundamental than science, that is, thinking that lets being reveal itself. True thinking discloses that language is not a tool one possesses to dominate entities; instead, one is "owned" by language. Language is the "house of being," the gathering and sheltering that lets entities reveal themselves in their own terms, not merely as objects for human use. In Ott's view, Heidegger's talk of responding to the presencing of entities through language may be analogous to Barth's claim that faith demands a response to the Word of God: Philosophy is to being as theology is to the self-manifesting Word of God.

Heidegger himself always warned of the dangers of misusing his thought for theological purposes. In 1928, he distinguished sharply between philosophy and theology. Much later, he claimed that if he were taken by faith, he would have to give up philosophy. He maintained that Christian faith cannot be fully understood in ontological terms; it must be rooted, instead, in the historical events of Christ's death and resurrection. Hence, he had doubts about the implications for faith of Bultmann's demythologizing. Although indebted to motifs drawn from the Judeo-Christian tradition, Heidegger did not intend to revive it. His call for a return of the gods shows his abiding concern for the sacred, but he denied that being can be identified with God. God is a kind of being, but being, as such, refers to the historically different ways in which entities reveal or manifest themselves. He hoped that, in the current dark time, the "destiny of being" would bring forth a new world in which the gods would reappear. It is not clear how he could have such hope in being, however, because it lacks a personal dimension. Still, his impact on modern theology has been great. Heidegger's early concern with hermeneutics was transmitted to theology by his student Hans-Georg Gadamer as well as by Bultmann. Furthermore, by offering an alternative to the dualistic understanding of human existence, by calling for a nonobjectifying way of speaking of the holy, and by urging us to remain open for a return of the sacred, Heidegger provided much insight not only for such Protestant theologians as Bultmann, Tillich, Gogarten, Fuchs, Ebeling, and Macquarrie, but also for such Catholic theologians as Karl Rahner.

Bibliography

Caputo, John D. The Mystical Element in Heidegger's Thought. Athens, Ohio, 1978. Excellent treatment of Heidegger's debt to Eckhart.

Caputo, John D. Heidegger and Aquinas: An Essay Overcoming Metaphysics. New York, 1982. An important study of the ontological and religious views.

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York, 1962. Indispensable for understanding Heidegger's early and later thought.

Heidegger, Martin. Discourse on Thinking. Translated by John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund. New York, 1966. Includes dialogue on "releasement."

Heidegger, Martin. The Piety of Thinking. Edited and translated, with commentary, by James G. Hart and John C. Maraldo. Bloomington, Ind., 1976. Contains Heidegger's famous article "Phenomenology and Theology" as well as other short essays on philosophy and theology.

Heidegger, Martin. The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Translated by Albert Hofstadter. Bloomington, Ind., 1982. Excellent historical approach to the question of being; purports to be the "working out" of a missing portion of Being and Time.

Kearney, Richard, and Stephen O'Leary, eds. Heidegger et la question de Dieu. Paris, 1980. Helpful collection of recent essays.

Macquarrie, John. An Existentialist Theology: A Comparison of Heidegger and Bultmann (1955). Reprint, New York, 1980. Insightful, comprehensive, and sympathetic treatment of this important topic.

Ott, Heinrich. Denken und Sein: Der Weg Martin Heideggers und der Weg der Theologie. Zollikon, Switzerland, 1959. Groundbreaking work on later Heidegger and theology.

Perotti, James L. Heidegger on the Divine. Athens, Ohio, 1974. Best short introduction to Heidegger and religion.

Robinson, James M., and John B. Cobb, Jr., eds. The Later Heidegger and Theology. New York, 1963. Useful survey of the German theological debate on Heidegger. Also includes American views.

Thiselton, Anthony C. The Two Horizons: New Testament Hermeneutics and Philosophical Description with Special Reference to Heidegger, Bultmann, and Wittgenstein. Grand Rapids, Mich., 1980. Scholarly and often penetrating treatment of a great variety of issues relating to Heidegger and theology.

Zimmerman, Michael E. Eclipse of the Self: The Development of Heidegger's Concept of Authenticity. Athens, Ohio, 1981. Analysis of authenticity in light of Heidegger's religious-spiritual concerns.

Michael E. Zimmerman (1987)